The Pakistan Cricket Board fining its players five million Pakistani rupees each for failing to qualify for the semifinals is another in the list of bizarre decisions it has taken around the World T20. There’s nothing like kicking a team when it’s down!

The successful, the struggling, the nearly men all have to pay. Throwing money at a problem is seldom an effective way of solving it. Neither is doing the reverse. Success and failure in sport do not depend on cheques and balances.

Thirty years ago, at another World Cup, India beat Pakistan in a quarterfinal, and there were riots in that country. Indians remained smug, telling one another that such things would never happen here. One newspaper editorial called Pakistan’s defeat evidence of “the inherent superficiality of the Pakistani ‘nation’.”

And then it happened in India. Crowds in Kolkata rioted even as India were losing to Sri Lanka. India’s patronising disapproval of the overreaction in Pakistan now looked misplaced. One commentator called it the “lumpenisation of the middle class”.........

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